“I moved to Saanich Peninsula Hospital because I was looking for a better work/life balance, which a smaller centre can provide,” says Carrie Tuck, who is currently the Charge Nurse in the Operating Room at SPH. “Having grown up in a very small town in southern Alberta, I prefer the smaller community-style hospitals.”

Previously the acting OR manager at SPH, Carrie Tuck began her career in 2005 as an LPN in the surgical units of Alberta’s hospitals. She started her nursing degree through Athabasca University while working in a catheterization laboratory, and after transferring to Victoria with her husband, Carrie finished her RN degree and preceptorship in the OR at Victoria General Hospital in 2016. She transferred to the OR at Saanich Peninsula Hospital In November of 2020.

At SPH, Carrie found a home. Not only does the Hospital provide a high standard of care, the morale of staff is high. Nurses come to work knowing they are surrounded by a team that cares about them both as an individual and for the work they do. It’s an environment where nurses know their careers can flourish, no matter whether they’re freshly out of nursing school, or senior leaders with a wealth of knowledge and experience. It’s an environment where nurses want to stay long term, and where Carrie says they come to work every day, ready to give back 150% to their patients.

“The staff initiatives that the Foundation supplies is second to none,” says Carrie, speaking about a recent Staff Appreciation Day, where the Foundation brought in food trucks and tents where staff from all departments gathered. “This was such an uplifting event for the team! It was just smiles for miles.” It’s those little things, Carrie says, that makes her passionate about coming to work everyday.

“Without the donors, we couldn’t do any of this,” Carrie adds. “It’s truly the community—the donors—that complete the full circle of care at our hospital. Without them, we wouldn’t have the state-of-the-art care, and we wouldn’t have the passion that drives our surgical services department. I’d like to express the most massive thank you to the donors.”

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“Not only does the program keep the Hospital afloat, but it also acts as an attraction for new doctors who are looking to either come to the peninsula, or perform locums. In that way, Doctor of the Day becomes a recruitment and retention tool, because most of the doctors who have come here in the past five to ten years were attracted by that program.”

As part of the Workforce Planning and Scheduling Group, Dr. Kwasnica is well-versed in what draws physicians to the community. He says the Doctor of the Day Program is structured in a way to incentivise physicians to provide local care in the community. “We’re very good at satisfying everyone’s needs, whether doctors have been here for thirty years, or three months. We offer the flexibility to come and go, and hopefully stay.”

Beyond the support the Foundation brings to Shoreline Medical which in turn, operates the Doctor of the Day Program, Dr. Kwasnica says donor support is integral to the high standard of care patients receive at SPH, and also to staff morale.

“The Foundation has a great interest in supporting patient care in all sorts of ways, like raising funds for the new CT Scanner,” says Dr. Kwasnica. “But the Foundation also takes a great interest in the care and wellbeing of the doctors, nurses, and every other role in the Hospital.”

Last year, Dr. Kwasnica approached the Foundation to ask if they’d support setting up a basketball hoop for staff to use, complete with basketballs in men’s and women’s sizes. The basketball hoop is a simple way for staff to practise self-care at work. “I can’t imagine another hospital where I could ask for that kind of support. It means so much just to know that we have access to that support when we need it.”

Saanich Peninsula Hospital is the kind of place where people enjoy coming to work everyday, and the Foundation, Dr. Kwasnica says, plays an integral role in fostering that environment. “The expansile nature of the camaraderie and collegialism of the entire community at large in healthcare is a very unique feature here. It’s magical.”

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“That combination—of the Foundation reaching out to community doctors to help their cost structure to make it viable to work in family practice, along with the rural-based practice model—has been a key recipe that allowed us to not be as badly off as we otherwise might have been,” says Dr. Irvine.

Although Dr. Brendon Irvine didn’t always know he wanted to be a doctor, he started volunteering at Royal Jubilee Hospital when he was a teenager. Helping people is his passion. Except for short stints practising family medicine in emergency departments in rural communities as well as time in Victoria’s hospitals, Saanich Peninsula Hospital is where he’s spent much of his career.

As a fully qualified Emergency physician with a background in community medicine, Dr. Irvine brought an invaluable perspective when he joined SPF in 2002; and has played a fundamental role in building the department into the sophisticated facility it is today. As both an Emergency physician and part of the Hospital’s leadership team, Dr. Irvine is working hard to find solutions to the challenges that currently face Primary Care.

It’s a model for Primary Care that works well in the community. Physicians say they are satisfied, as the system allows them greater learning and career opportunities. “We also have a very strong involvement with nursing and medical students,” Dr. Irvine adds, “which allows us to show and teach this example of combined community and hospital care.”

Dr. Irvine says the ER, where he spends his clinical hours, sees problems when the Primary Care system starts to fail. As patients have more trouble accessing routine care, there is a rise in delayed diagnosis of things like cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. Emergency has seen a steady increase in demand, which means that staff shortages compound the problem.

Donors can help. Through financial contributions to the Foundation, and also by serving as volunteers in the Hospital, individuals in the community can play a direct role in ensuring the Hospital continues to provide access to Primary Care on the peninsula.

“We want to have good services for our families, because this is our community,” says Dr. Irvine. “Thirty years into my career, I’m still finding great rewards. I’m very proud of our team to have gone through challenging times over the past three years, and still show up with compassion and the ability to care well for people.”

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“The new Emergency, which was built in 2003 thanks to funding from the Foundation, expanded the department from six beds to eighteen, and it has functioned so well for nearly twenty years,” says Dr. Unger, who credits the Foundation for making sure that Emergency staff are trained and prepared with the right equipment for anything that might come through the Emergency doors.

Dr. Unger also remembers a time when the Hospital Emergency did not have a CT scan until the Foundation raised funds to purchase a new one. “We now have one of the best CT scans in the province, allowing us to do special imaging of the heart. The Royal Jubilee and Victoria General don’t have that technology, so our scan filled an important niche; again, thanks to the support of the Foundation.”

It’s that support that fosters the high morale and positive working environment that attracted Dr. Unger to the Saanich Peninsula Hospital in the first place. “I could tell that Saanich Peninsula Hospital was a special place right from the get-go,” he says. He currently works full time at Saanich Peninsula Hospital, both as the ER doctor and in administration, travelling occasionally to do healthcare work internationally. “This really feels to me like a living, breathing building. It needs to be cared for and nurtured and cleaned and supported, and that involves everyone—security, the cleaning staff, the people who make meals for patients, the doctors and nurses—it really feels like a family.”

That feeling, says Dr. Unger, is unique to the SPH. His career has taken him across Canada and internationally—to Nepal, Vanuatu and Africa. Later, when he and his wife settled in Victoria in 2001 to raise their family, Dr. Unger worked in Emergency departments throughout the South Island; including Nanaimo, Duncan, Royal Jubilee, Victoria General, and eventually, Saanich Peninsula Hospital. At SPH, he has found the perfect place to be able to give back.

“It feels like a wonderful responsibility to care for people in this community, including the four First Nations. There’s a special connection here between the Hospital and the community, and staff work really hard to be diverse, inclusive and supportive of everyone in the community.” As Dr. Unger and his team continue to face the challenges posed by staffing shortages and increasing demands on the Emergency as the local population ages and grows, they know the Foundation and its donors are there to offer support in every way possible.

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Originally a pianist with a Masters degree in music, Dr. Carrie Wilhelm-Boyles fulfilled her dream of a career in medicine in her mid-thirties. After attending medical school in Winnipeg, Dr. Wilhelm-Boyles spent several years at Surrey Memorial Hospital before moving to the island to make her home in North Saanich with her husband. Although she enjoyed the fast pace of larger hospitals, Dr. Wilhelm-Boyles says there’s a close camaraderie amongst the SPH staff that she hadn’t experienced before. Being such a small site, Hospital staff also have a special relationship with community members who come through Emergency’s doors.

Often, patients have a history of care that ER doctors are aware of, due in part to the Doctor of the Day Program, which brings in family doctors to help staff the ER. “It’s so great to have general practitioners here,” says Dr. Wilhelm-Boyles. “As an Emergency physician, I don’t practise family medicine, so it’s helpful to have their perspective for things like referrals to specialists, and follow up care. Having general practitioners right here in the ER also helps fill the gap for people who don’t have a family physician.”

In a small community, there’s a direct connection between each donor who gives to the Foundation, and the daily operations in the Hospital, and Dr. Wilhelm-Boyles says staff members feel those positive impacts every day. “Everybody here is so grateful to the Foundation for all the things they’ve done over the years.”

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